Cover Lover is not one for soapboxes, so this will be short like a Bonaparte and sweet like a Napoleon. The 2008 Olympics get underway today in Beijing, and Cover Lover has already had his fill of anti-doping editorials. Every athlete who participates in organized sports knows the consequences of winning an event with a banned substance in their bloodstream. Personally, Cover Lover thinks the games would be more interesting if athletes were allowed to get hopped up on whatever they want in their quest for gold. It’s all right there in the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius.
Cover Lover wonders what the world of literature would be like if authors had to pee in a cup before getting published. Would Aldous Huxley have braved a new world without LSD, or been as perceptive without mescaline? Ken Kesey took those drugs plus psilocybin when he volunteered for a government study; he went on to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and pull merry pranks. Opium eaters, laudanum drinkers, pill poppers, weed smokers—the world of literature is crawling with them.
Cover Lover asks you to consider your favorite wired writer(s) and imagine how their creative lives would have been affected by the absence of controlled substances. Should there be some international committee controlling creativity? Haven’t we got enough hurdles to jump through?
1 comment:
But athletes' performances are arguably *improved* by their drugging, at least in the short term; while anyone who's read very much William Burroughs might not be as inclined to find the same true for prose writers. I'm not saying; I'm just saying.
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